Oh please! Call it what it was, which several agents even called it, a "false flag operation" to try to build a connection where none existed of American guns going to Mexican dope dealers so they could try to push tougher gun laws HERE.
And its not even the first time the US government has been busted pulling a false flag, 58,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese died thanks to the false flag Gulf of Tonkin incident, and just like in this case the full details won't be learned until the principals involved are long dead and can't be prosecuted, then the MSM will just do a "Oh BTW" and then act like we should just pretend it never happened, just like Vietnam.
The simple fact is Mexican dope dealers can just trade their dope to any of the Bumfuckistan former Warsaw Pact countries and get all the Soviet era fully auto weapons they want, including grenades and rocket launchers and even a fricking sub if they want one, they don't need American semi auto anything which is why they had to cook up "Fast & Furious" because the data they were finding showed the vast majority were carrying AK47s, just like every other guerrilla force on the planet NOT American guns.
THIS is why they should be rotting in jail, THIS is why we need a full investigation, not because somebody fucked up and people got killed but because you have the US government running a false flag op on its own people to try to manipulate them into going along with the political plans of the ones pulling the op.
Hell I don't even see a connection with candy cigs, no kid in my neighborhood started smoking because they had candy cigs, they started smoking because the local cool kid with the motorbike and the leather jacket that all the babes went for smoked.
And as you pointed out its even more asinine when you are talking about guns, one of those high end weapons are easily several thousand dollars just for the lower end models. I should know as I have a buddy that does shooting competitions and have actually gotten to shoot many of the high end sporting guns like the desert eagle and these guns? NOT in any way shape or form cheap. Hell he had to build a special safe inside his home just to get insurance on his collection because of how damned expensive those things are.
So I just don't know how they are trying to sell this, maybe as a generic love of guns created by the games? Even that doesn't really make sense as the guns your average person can afford are generally the "crap guns" in these kinds of games so its not exactly glamorizing anything your average Joe is ever gonna have the money to afford. I honestly can't even think of a game where your Saturday night special or low end automatic wasn't the crap gun you couldn't wait to get rid of.
I'll tell ya why they insist on that....Far Cry II. Anybody play that game? If you did you'd think a good 90% of the guns out there are made of garbage and fail because of how you can't even fire 2 clips through the damned things before the brand new gun JAMS UP on you, often getting your ass turned into a bullet pinata
So yeah, can't say as I blame 'em as if I worked at one of these companies after FCII I wouldn't let my designs be put in any game without some sort of ability to make sure they didn't make the thing look as shitty as an AK left in the mud for 20 years, there is realism and there is just making everything look shitty, FCII was a case of the latter big time.
But you are ALREADY attempting to demonize them, they have a 100% legal product yet you call them "sick filth" thus making them somehow evil and you somehow good for being opposed to them.
To that I say you should read Castle Rock V Gonzales, where the SCOTUS makes it 100% clear that it is NOT the job of the police to protect or serve YOU, their job is to protect and serve THE STATE how EXACTLY you are supposed to do that? Are you gonna beg really nicely and Mr Scumbag is gonna give a fuck? Look up how well that worked in the Wichita massacre. Hell we have already seen what bans accomplish, in Mexico it is 100% ILLEGAL for a citizen to own a gun, do their criminals throw rocks at each other? Nope in fact the criminals rule whole sections of that country because ex USSR weapons are dirt cheap on the black market.
So don't play the games, simple as that. I mean for the love of God this is the United States where EVERYTHING is copyrighted, yet we are supposed to believe you thought they could just steal the logos and designs of all the companies and not pay for them? Really? me thinks thou protest too much and just want to keep your myopic world view while having your cake and eating it too. Go play any of the bazillion RPGs out there that don't have modern weapons if you don't want to have anything to do with guns, but don't tell the rest of us what we can and can't spend our money on because many of us have no problem with companies like Colt and S&W, thanks anyway.
But WHERE does it end? With only stuff YOU don't like? or are you for disclosing everything about everything?
Because i hate to break the news to ya but every single piece of entertainment ON THE PLANET has as many as 50+ sponsors, from record labels to fast food joints, this is why nobody drinks "cola soda" in movies or shows anymore because SOMEBODY will pay for that slot.
Now if you want that ALL disclosed? Fine, where do you want it? want to make everybody run a 4 page disclaimer before every single piece of entertainment? maybe a website where you can look up the 4 pages worth of disclaimers before every piece of entertainment?
As you can see simply saying "the customer has a right to know" gets complicated REALLY fucking quick IRL with so much mixing of entertainment, corporate branding, and even politics. should we have a disclaimer if the director is a leftist? Or a rightest? How about a disclaimer for each and every corp that paid or was paid for product placement? Where does it end?
Actually most of the products you can identify in movies have either had the rights paid for by the movie company or if the movie is a big name flick will often get money from the company in return for showing their product in a favorable light. Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement.
So its not like you haven't been seeing the same thing in hollywood for years, with the smaller movies paying a fee for licensing while the big names get the product for free or even get a check for showing it, its common practice. Watch the horribly bad movie "Jack & Jill" sometime which rumor has it even though it bombed Sandler and pals actually came out ahead thanks to how much product placement was in that movie. they might as well have called it "Jack and Jill, sponsored by *" for all the products from dunkin donuts to Sony electronics you see on the screen. i honestly don't think there is 4 minutes in the whole movie where a logo isn't visible, its THAT obvious.
Oh c'mon! If Jessie Ventura can rip a 20mm chain gun off a Huey and walking fire it then surely Joe average can just pick up a 50cal and fire it like a 30-06! I mean when was the last time you watched an action movie?
But honestly how could you expect them to act ANY differently when moral watchdog types have been treating them like 50s watchdogs treated rock n' roll for what? 30+ years now? I mean what was one of the FIRST THINGS that the media start harping about when the Sandy Hook shooting happened? "Did Lanza...gasp!...Play...dum dum dum...video games?" I swear I saw articles with that as the fucking headline not 24 hours after the damned shooting!
So I don't blame the video games industry one little bit, they've had wrinkled old farts trying to get them since the days of fricking Night Trap. Remember its not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you, and articles like TFA show that the answer to that is a definite YES they are out to get the video games industry.
Then don't fucking play them but don't tell ME who may or may not support your beliefs what I can and can't play, deal? I'm so fucking sick of these nanny staters thinking they have some sort of moral superiority that gives them the right to tell ME how I'm supposed to live, what I'm supposed to spend my money on, or how I am supposed to think.
To all of them I say please go DIAF and take your moral superiority with you, I don't try to tell you what you can and can't spend your money on so don't you dare tell me how to live, deal?
Because some on the ultra far left don't like anything to do with guns or violence and try to make anything to do with either look evil/shady/sexist/racist or whatever other PC "bad" words you can affix?
Look I don't care what you believe as long as I'm allowed to believe differently, the classic "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" argument but just because you don't like something doesn't make it "bad" or wrong or evil, that is classic political demonization of those that disagree. i had an argument recently with an ultra lefty who was moaning about the lack of female avatars in modern shooters. I simply said "Take a game like Bulletstorm where I get a "ball buster" achievement for blowing a guy's crotch off. Would you have a problem if there were females in the game and there was a "sex change" achievement for blowing off her tits?"
The answers i got illustrated better than anything how you are NOT allowed to think differently than them because i was just a monster for daring to even suggest that, their answer was NOT to simply not have females in the game as devs do now but to remove the violence against the males which if you are gonna remove the violence in games why the fuck even call them games anymore? Just call them Second Life and let everybody be forced to have tea parties and shit.
At the end of the day I do NOT give a rat's ass about hyper realistic shooters but you know what? I would NEVER EVER say you shouldn't be able to play 'em. if shooting a gun so perfectly modeled that even the bullet drop is accurate to within a tenth of an inch over 1000 yards makes you happy? More power to you and I'm glad somebody will cater to your tastes, boring as i find them. But just because i personally don't care for something doesn't give me the right to demonize anybody that does, but sadly we see that behavior on both the ultra left (anything they consider violent or nationalistic) and on the right (the poor and minorities to a certain degree) but we need to call that shit when it happens and instantly dismiss it as the bullshit that it is. You can have a discussion without demonizing the other side and if the ONLY way you can make your argument is to make the other side "evil" then perhaps the problem isn't the other side but the shakiness of your argument.
Exactly these games are all about selling a specific FANTASY about war, in that fantasy everybody is Rambo and nobody is Joe Blow the nameless nobody getting the shit jobs like digging ditches or hauling canned goods, its all fantasy.
And those specific guns play into that fantasy, which is why you see the same damned guns in every game, just as you can't sell a football game in the USA without the NFL because those logos and outfits all play into the armchair quarterback's fantasy of being the big football star.
So on the one hand while I'm no fan of arms dealers and think we've been overboard for many years when it comes to what can and can't be copyrighted on the other hand these companies know EXACTLY what guns to get, they've done countless focus groups and know EXACTLY what the people that play those games want which is why we see the same thing over and over. While I personally find it boring as hell and would rather play something like Borderlands with infinite variation if somebody is willing to pay the money to play with virtual military hardware? Meh whatever floats your boat I guess.
Because you'd probably get sued for copyright infringement if you weren't damned careful. This is the bed the "IP" groups made and now we all have to sleep in it, in a world where everything can and is copyrighted it all ends up with somebody getting a check somewhere when you make any damned thing anymore.
Because a LOT of that shit won't work unless its got two way communications? yeah i know its fucking stupid, but YOU try setting up Internet TVs or STBs or the like and find out how quickly that shit falls down and goes boom if you don't have UPNP, games won't work, devices won't get updated lists for like TV listings, nothing will work if they don't have UPNP allowing 2 way communications.
Again I agree completely that its fucking stupid but you are talking about billions of dollars in devices you are gonna have to shitcan or pay some guy like me a couple hundred bucks to do a service call to set up every. single. time. because without UPNP many of these damned things will just refuse to do shit. Sadly the only other way I can think of without shitcanning billions of dollars worth of stuff is just dump them on a DMZ and let them be one big giant fucking botnet because without full 2 way communications most of that shit just won't work, so its either leave it on a DMZ or allow UPNP.
Believe me, I've looked into alternatives, there isn't one. Once UPNP was invented all progress just halted and now every device expects UPNP off the bat and won't do shit without it.
So I'm sorry but stick a fork, the fat lady is down the street having a sammich, its done. Win 8 will go next to WinME and MS Bob on the "WTF were they thinking?" lists next year and no matter how many warehouses full MSFT buys they won't be able to give that megabomb away, its over.
Oh I'm sorry, that was the policy under Bill Gates who actually knew how to run a business. You have to revise the formula when working under Ballmer's management..
Step 1: Embrace, Step 2: "What is Apple doing?" Step 3: Copy badly what Apple did years before, Step 4: Lose billions while failing horribly.
That is a MUCH more accurate of how things work under the current management, especially when you take into account the fact that he has pissed away something like 40 billion plus on failed ventures in the past 6 years. The old EEE strategy may have been assholeish but it didn't leave MSFT in much worse shape than when they started which is the end result of pretty much every play Ballmer does.
On a final note, to all the FOSS zealots who still think MSFT is the threat? Please leave the 90s and join the rest of us in reality, okay? Ballmer can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and makes Dilbert's PHB look like Steve Jobs, hell if you want to know what his "strategy" is just look at what Apple was doing 3 to 5 years ago and copy that poorly and there ya go! Frankly we have MUCH worse threats than Uncle Fester the bumbling buffoon to worry about, like Apple's walled gardens or Google pretending to be friendly while making devices like the ChromeBook that is as locked down as any cellphone, now THOSE are problems. Worrying about MSFT whose output for the past few years can be summed up as "fail fail fail fail" is kinda pointless, wait until they actually make another product people will buy (if they ever do) because its like you are ignoring the major issues to nitpick against your "old rival" who frankly isn't even up to the task of being anybody's rival ATM.
For MSFT to be a threat to anything you are gonna have to have somebody with an actual vision in the big chair, as it is now all we have is Apple and a badly done ersatz Apple, and nobody wants ersatz.
Well you have "Windows Anytime Upgrade" which means that you have every component from Windows home through windows Ultimate sitting on the drive in case you decide some day to hand MSFT your CC number and have the switch flipped, as another pointed out you have every version of.NET, you also have Windows SXS (side by side) which puts all the various DLLs that programs try to dump into windows into their own bottles so if some program needs version Foo and some program needs version bar you can have both Foo and Bar even though Windows has been updated to the latest version SNAFU, then of course there is all the different languages, that's a lot of stuff to keep up with and it all takes up space.
I've found if you want to run vista or better on something that is gonna be hurting for space its best to use Vlite or some other similar program to strip out all the shit you aren't gonna ever need as you can shrink Windows vista and 7 by a pretty good amount just by gutting all the extra crap. why MSFT doesn't have an "advanced mode" during install that lets you choose what gets installed like they used to during Win9X I'll never know.
Frankly the end users have been confused as hell since the HDD manufacturers switched from base 2 to base 10 when they were racing to 1GB. Hell even with this, is it 23GB in base 2 like the OS, or is it base 10 like the manufacturers?
But lets face it we all know this is gonna go over like a fart in an elevator, I mean MSFT is making it obvious they don't even understand their own fricking customers with this crap. Does Ballmer think people buy Windows because of the branding like Prada or Nike? Nobody is gonna want this because nobody buys Windows because the brand gives them a warm fuzzy, hell most folks can't even tell you which version of Windows is on their devices!
No the bottom line is people buy windows because of all the X86 Windows software they have to run which makes Surface RT less than pointless, they aren't like Apple where the biggest programs are written by Apple themselves so having Windows on ARM makes absolutely ZERO sense. The fact that MSFT had to cut their Surface order in half should be a surprise to nobody, who is gonna want a Windows that doesn't run Windows programs?
So the fact it doesn't come with 64GB of space, be it base 2 or 10, really isn't gonna make a bit of difference when it comes to sales, its all those people getting home and finding none of the Windows software they've accumalated for years will run on the damned thing, THAT is what is gonna make this into a megaflop. Never before in all my years in tech have I seen a company just blow their own brains out like this, they would have a better ROI if they let some chimps throw poo at stock page and buy what has the most poo on it than they will off their "new flagship", its just got the stench of death and failure pouring off it.
So even you admit that you have to 1.-Put it into Dev mode, 2. Format the hard drive, no dual boots allowed, oh and you forgot 3.- You can ONLY use a single version of Ubuntu that is done by one guy because a bog standard X86 install WILL NOT WORK thanks to how fucking locked down the BIOS/UEFI is even under "dev mode".
As for why they are still getting checks from Android, duh! Because they can't give away their own product in mobile and that's the closest they've come to a positive revenue stream in mobile in over a decade!
If MSFT had any real power left they'd be using Windows licensing to force OEMs to drop Android but that ain't happening, instead it looks like more companies like Acer are in talks to give more business to Google as they can see that Win 8 is a megafail.
so if anything we need to be MORE vigilant, not less, and hold Google's feet to the fire because if they end up taking over and continue to use the ChromeOS model the future of X86 is gonna be nothing but game consoles, all locked down and controlled by corporate AFTER the sale as well as before. i mean when you can't even install Debian or Slax on a Celeron? Something is SERIOUSLY wrong here.
And what pisses me off is the DRM never works, it would be different if they could trot out some numbers to show that when game X was DRM free they sold Y but when DRM was added they sold X+Y but nope, all that ends up happening is shit like this where a guy has to go and crack a brand new game that he just paid $60 for because the DRM has made just playing the damned thing impossible.
And I know EXACTLY how he feels as i have a bunch of games from the late 90s-mid 00s that I HAVE to use the pirate version just to play the game i bought because while the game itself has NO problems running on a 64bit modern OS the DRM is 16bit shit that if you are lucky just crashes, if not it'll try to jam 32bit kernel hooks into a 64bit kernel and fuck up the whole OS. Oh and to add insult to injury the remover that the DRM companies put out to get rid of their shit? Doesn't run on a 64bit OS! Argh!
I've also had pretty good luck with the Lenovo HTPC remote and its combo of trackball and mini-keyboard makes it quite easy to do a lot of the stuff that would normally require you putting down your remote and reaching for a keyboard, renaming files or whipping off a quick chat for instance.
For those that want an XBMC HTPC without all the hassle I'd suggest OpenELEC as they have it pre-built for most of the popular HTPC hardware, Atom+ION, AMD Fusion, Intel GMA, even Apple TV and Raspberry Pi. They are at RC2 with this latest XBMC so I figure another few days and it'll be the main release and it is pretty much install and go.
So if all you want is an HTPC there ya go, its lightweight, built just for running XBMC, and has all the drivers for the hardware you are gonna be using, couldn't be simpler.
Nooo...its a solution to a VERY real problem but its a problem that most geeks don't realize exists. You see your average Joe has all these devices that can connect to the Internet, multiple PCs, tablet, phone, Internet enabled TV, but they don't have a damned clue on how to make ANY of that shit play nice with one another or to set it up so they can use them on the net as they were designed.
So UPNP was invented so Joe average wouldn't have to pay a guy like me a couple of hundred bucks to set up their network while at the same time not having the routers set to just broadcast in the clear with zero encryption and for that? it actually worked pretty well. Now we need a new generation that will be backwards compatible enough so that everyone isn't gonna have to throw out their TVs or tablets while bumping up the security.
But you can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater as folks still need a way to get all this stuff to hook up and to talk to each other without having to have a degree just to get it to work. Like it or not UPNP is a very useful tech to Joe and Jane average and as we get more and more internet capable devices they'll need plug and play simple even more.
And ya know what? despite what so many have written poo pooing the idea of a boycott "poo poo they never work poo poo" the fact that EA is on the selling block along with Activision's parent company looking to restructure tells me that boycotts DO work, they just take awhile to be fully felt.
And if nothing else at the very least you aren't paying to be treated like shit. I refuse to buy any game that has always online DRM and make it clear to the company whose product I'm avoiding not only WHY I'm avoiding them but what competitor got the money earmarked for them. When D3 came out with always online DRM I wrote Blizzard a nice letter telling them that despite buying both of the previous products several times (for myself and for family/friends) this time I would be giving my money to Torchlight II instead which I bought several copies of. While ultimately nobody in a position of power may read my letter at least they know where several sales went and if enough people do the same they can certainly feel it on their bottom line.
Ultimately even if the corp doesn't hear us we have to make sure the Internet media hears us, so that the corps can't use that old scapegoat piracy as an excuse to demand more draconian copyright laws like DMCA. As it is now if we do not speak up some PHB will be trotting out a PPT and while pointing at the numbers say "If you see here we sold X number of our previous product and our focus groups say X+Y play games of that genre today so the fact that we didn't sell X+Y just proves its those dirty pirates".
But I make it clear on any discussion of the game/s I'm boycotting that neither me nor my family will have this product as long as its anti-consumer, we won't buy it, download it, it won't be allowed in our home. So make your voice heard, speak up and let the world know when you refuse to buy a game because of shitty practices and no pirating it either, that just gives them more ammo to use against us.
Paulson is just trying to make himself out to be some sort of savior when in reality only if the Chinese were seriously fucking retarded would they even consider such a frankly ignorant move and I can't picture the Russians being that fucking stupid either.
One thing that should be as plain as the nose on your face is that kind of collapse NEVER stays local, it ALWAYS spreads. One need only look at the crash of 29 which even at the much slower pace of communications had spread across the globe in less than a year and by 32 had the entire planet in a full blown depression to see letting a large economy collapse like a house of cards is NEVER a good idea. Sure China has room for internal growth but nowhere near what it would take to replace their exports which would dry up and blow away like a fart in the breeze, as a collapsing America would probably drag a good chunk of the west with it, everything is just too interconnected.
As for TFA this just in....Cheap shitty code for cheap shitty cameras has holes you can drive a truck though. Oh and water is wet, the sky is blue, and night follows the day. Frankly if the code on ANY of that Cheapo Chinese Crap was anything but piss poor I'd be amazed. As somebody who has to install a bunch of that shit for customers I can tell you that you are lucky if you can even get through the installation without the installer crapping on itself, its obvious that its all about how cheaply they can crank these things out NOT about having decent software to go with the thing.
And the people looking to take a windows PC and convert it to a linux pc... well they're will always be someone you can take it to to flash an open bios or otherwise 'unlock it'.
Or those people along with anyone else who actually cares about open hardware could just put their money where their mouths are and buy AMD who is switching to Coreboot which is a FOSS BIOS/UEFI replacement. After all no need to "flash an open BIOS" if you already have one.
But again its total flamebait as there has been ZERO word or indication to state a position by MSFT one way or another when it comes to the issue.
Personally I think old Ballmer has too damned much on his plate to give a shit about Linux one way or another ATM, he has pretty much bet the farm as well as his own rep (for what little that is worth) on a strategy that might as well be written in crayon on the back of a napkin, namely "Become Apple" which he is learning, just as HP and RIM learned before him, that such a goal is a hell of a lot easier said than done.
So let's wait until someone has actually done something to be all pissy about, yes? With the company fighting the OEMs and trying to convince a public that honestly doesn't give a fuck that slapping a paint job on a Pinto means it can compete with Porsche I truly believe that Ballmer and Co isn't paying a lick of attention to Linux, hell they would probably be happy if Linux hackers were to make any decent number of WinTabs sales as they have had cut their order for Surface units in half to keep from ending up with a warehouse full of the damned things.
BTW as a final note if everyone wants a reason for Linux guys to get their panties in a twist I'll be happy to give you a topic that will do just that: Everyone is cheering the flaming out of Ballmer's folly but why isn't anybody speaking up when it looks like Google is gonna be just as douchey as MSFT and it some ways even worse? Have you SEEN the new Acer ChromeBook? You have an X86 CPU, hard drive, RAM, etc that are so bog standard it hurts yet is so locked down you can't even run Linux X86 on the damned thing! Even MSFT specified that SecureBoot was to be able to be turned off on X86 so you can take any new X86 Windows machine and be booting any standard Linux LiveCD/USB in moments but the ONLY way to do so with a Chromebook is to pour in a page and a half of CLI gobbledygook and do a lot of finger crossing as you have to wipe the hard drive and nobody knows if doing so will void the warranty or not!
So you want something to get pissed over there ya go, if Google were to take over from MSFT tomorrow things would be WORSE not better. Personally I think if everyone doesn't stand up and have a raging shitfit the future is gonna be game consoles all the way down, you can give up on DIY or on having X86 be a general purpose platform as its gonna be as tightly locked down and controlled as any cellphone and will be just as worthless when the corporate owners abandon support for a model.
While I'm all for getting rid of the MSFT monopoly on X86 I don't want to do so at the cost of what made X86 great in the first place.
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Oh please! Call it what it was, which several agents even called it, a "false flag operation" to try to build a connection where none existed of American guns going to Mexican dope dealers so they could try to push tougher gun laws HERE.
And its not even the first time the US government has been busted pulling a false flag, 58,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese died thanks to the false flag Gulf of Tonkin incident, and just like in this case the full details won't be learned until the principals involved are long dead and can't be prosecuted, then the MSM will just do a "Oh BTW" and then act like we should just pretend it never happened, just like Vietnam.
The simple fact is Mexican dope dealers can just trade their dope to any of the Bumfuckistan former Warsaw Pact countries and get all the Soviet era fully auto weapons they want, including grenades and rocket launchers and even a fricking sub if they want one, they don't need American semi auto anything which is why they had to cook up "Fast & Furious" because the data they were finding showed the vast majority were carrying AK47s, just like every other guerrilla force on the planet NOT American guns.
THIS is why they should be rotting in jail, THIS is why we need a full investigation, not because somebody fucked up and people got killed but because you have the US government running a false flag op on its own people to try to manipulate them into going along with the political plans of the ones pulling the op.
Hell I don't even see a connection with candy cigs, no kid in my neighborhood started smoking because they had candy cigs, they started smoking because the local cool kid with the motorbike and the leather jacket that all the babes went for smoked.
And as you pointed out its even more asinine when you are talking about guns, one of those high end weapons are easily several thousand dollars just for the lower end models. I should know as I have a buddy that does shooting competitions and have actually gotten to shoot many of the high end sporting guns like the desert eagle and these guns? NOT in any way shape or form cheap. Hell he had to build a special safe inside his home just to get insurance on his collection because of how damned expensive those things are.
So I just don't know how they are trying to sell this, maybe as a generic love of guns created by the games? Even that doesn't really make sense as the guns your average person can afford are generally the "crap guns" in these kinds of games so its not exactly glamorizing anything your average Joe is ever gonna have the money to afford. I honestly can't even think of a game where your Saturday night special or low end automatic wasn't the crap gun you couldn't wait to get rid of.
I'll tell ya why they insist on that....Far Cry II. Anybody play that game? If you did you'd think a good 90% of the guns out there are made of garbage and fail because of how you can't even fire 2 clips through the damned things before the brand new gun JAMS UP on you, often getting your ass turned into a bullet pinata
So yeah, can't say as I blame 'em as if I worked at one of these companies after FCII I wouldn't let my designs be put in any game without some sort of ability to make sure they didn't make the thing look as shitty as an AK left in the mud for 20 years, there is realism and there is just making everything look shitty, FCII was a case of the latter big time.
But you are ALREADY attempting to demonize them, they have a 100% legal product yet you call them "sick filth" thus making them somehow evil and you somehow good for being opposed to them.
To that I say you should read Castle Rock V Gonzales, where the SCOTUS makes it 100% clear that it is NOT the job of the police to protect or serve YOU, their job is to protect and serve THE STATE how EXACTLY you are supposed to do that? Are you gonna beg really nicely and Mr Scumbag is gonna give a fuck? Look up how well that worked in the Wichita massacre. Hell we have already seen what bans accomplish, in Mexico it is 100% ILLEGAL for a citizen to own a gun, do their criminals throw rocks at each other? Nope in fact the criminals rule whole sections of that country because ex USSR weapons are dirt cheap on the black market.
So don't play the games, simple as that. I mean for the love of God this is the United States where EVERYTHING is copyrighted, yet we are supposed to believe you thought they could just steal the logos and designs of all the companies and not pay for them? Really? me thinks thou protest too much and just want to keep your myopic world view while having your cake and eating it too. Go play any of the bazillion RPGs out there that don't have modern weapons if you don't want to have anything to do with guns, but don't tell the rest of us what we can and can't spend our money on because many of us have no problem with companies like Colt and S&W, thanks anyway.
But WHERE does it end? With only stuff YOU don't like? or are you for disclosing everything about everything?
Because i hate to break the news to ya but every single piece of entertainment ON THE PLANET has as many as 50+ sponsors, from record labels to fast food joints, this is why nobody drinks "cola soda" in movies or shows anymore because SOMEBODY will pay for that slot.
Now if you want that ALL disclosed? Fine, where do you want it? want to make everybody run a 4 page disclaimer before every single piece of entertainment? maybe a website where you can look up the 4 pages worth of disclaimers before every piece of entertainment?
As you can see simply saying "the customer has a right to know" gets complicated REALLY fucking quick IRL with so much mixing of entertainment, corporate branding, and even politics. should we have a disclaimer if the director is a leftist? Or a rightest? How about a disclaimer for each and every corp that paid or was paid for product placement? Where does it end?
Actually most of the products you can identify in movies have either had the rights paid for by the movie company or if the movie is a big name flick will often get money from the company in return for showing their product in a favorable light. Why do you think every person that uses a laptop in a movie is always using a MacBook when IRL that is less than 10% of the population? Product placement.
So its not like you haven't been seeing the same thing in hollywood for years, with the smaller movies paying a fee for licensing while the big names get the product for free or even get a check for showing it, its common practice. Watch the horribly bad movie "Jack & Jill" sometime which rumor has it even though it bombed Sandler and pals actually came out ahead thanks to how much product placement was in that movie. they might as well have called it "Jack and Jill, sponsored by *" for all the products from dunkin donuts to Sony electronics you see on the screen. i honestly don't think there is 4 minutes in the whole movie where a logo isn't visible, its THAT obvious.
Oh c'mon! If Jessie Ventura can rip a 20mm chain gun off a Huey and walking fire it then surely Joe average can just pick up a 50cal and fire it like a 30-06! I mean when was the last time you watched an action movie?
But honestly how could you expect them to act ANY differently when moral watchdog types have been treating them like 50s watchdogs treated rock n' roll for what? 30+ years now? I mean what was one of the FIRST THINGS that the media start harping about when the Sandy Hook shooting happened? "Did Lanza...gasp!...Play...dum dum dum...video games?" I swear I saw articles with that as the fucking headline not 24 hours after the damned shooting!
So I don't blame the video games industry one little bit, they've had wrinkled old farts trying to get them since the days of fricking Night Trap. Remember its not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you, and articles like TFA show that the answer to that is a definite YES they are out to get the video games industry.
Then don't fucking play them but don't tell ME who may or may not support your beliefs what I can and can't play, deal? I'm so fucking sick of these nanny staters thinking they have some sort of moral superiority that gives them the right to tell ME how I'm supposed to live, what I'm supposed to spend my money on, or how I am supposed to think.
To all of them I say please go DIAF and take your moral superiority with you, I don't try to tell you what you can and can't spend your money on so don't you dare tell me how to live, deal?
Because some on the ultra far left don't like anything to do with guns or violence and try to make anything to do with either look evil/shady/sexist/racist or whatever other PC "bad" words you can affix?
Look I don't care what you believe as long as I'm allowed to believe differently, the classic "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" argument but just because you don't like something doesn't make it "bad" or wrong or evil, that is classic political demonization of those that disagree. i had an argument recently with an ultra lefty who was moaning about the lack of female avatars in modern shooters. I simply said "Take a game like Bulletstorm where I get a "ball buster" achievement for blowing a guy's crotch off. Would you have a problem if there were females in the game and there was a "sex change" achievement for blowing off her tits?"
The answers i got illustrated better than anything how you are NOT allowed to think differently than them because i was just a monster for daring to even suggest that, their answer was NOT to simply not have females in the game as devs do now but to remove the violence against the males which if you are gonna remove the violence in games why the fuck even call them games anymore? Just call them Second Life and let everybody be forced to have tea parties and shit.
At the end of the day I do NOT give a rat's ass about hyper realistic shooters but you know what? I would NEVER EVER say you shouldn't be able to play 'em. if shooting a gun so perfectly modeled that even the bullet drop is accurate to within a tenth of an inch over 1000 yards makes you happy? More power to you and I'm glad somebody will cater to your tastes, boring as i find them. But just because i personally don't care for something doesn't give me the right to demonize anybody that does, but sadly we see that behavior on both the ultra left (anything they consider violent or nationalistic) and on the right (the poor and minorities to a certain degree) but we need to call that shit when it happens and instantly dismiss it as the bullshit that it is. You can have a discussion without demonizing the other side and if the ONLY way you can make your argument is to make the other side "evil" then perhaps the problem isn't the other side but the shakiness of your argument.
Exactly these games are all about selling a specific FANTASY about war, in that fantasy everybody is Rambo and nobody is Joe Blow the nameless nobody getting the shit jobs like digging ditches or hauling canned goods, its all fantasy.
And those specific guns play into that fantasy, which is why you see the same damned guns in every game, just as you can't sell a football game in the USA without the NFL because those logos and outfits all play into the armchair quarterback's fantasy of being the big football star.
So on the one hand while I'm no fan of arms dealers and think we've been overboard for many years when it comes to what can and can't be copyrighted on the other hand these companies know EXACTLY what guns to get, they've done countless focus groups and know EXACTLY what the people that play those games want which is why we see the same thing over and over. While I personally find it boring as hell and would rather play something like Borderlands with infinite variation if somebody is willing to pay the money to play with virtual military hardware? Meh whatever floats your boat I guess.
Because you'd probably get sued for copyright infringement if you weren't damned careful. This is the bed the "IP" groups made and now we all have to sleep in it, in a world where everything can and is copyrighted it all ends up with somebody getting a check somewhere when you make any damned thing anymore.
Because a LOT of that shit won't work unless its got two way communications? yeah i know its fucking stupid, but YOU try setting up Internet TVs or STBs or the like and find out how quickly that shit falls down and goes boom if you don't have UPNP, games won't work, devices won't get updated lists for like TV listings, nothing will work if they don't have UPNP allowing 2 way communications.
Again I agree completely that its fucking stupid but you are talking about billions of dollars in devices you are gonna have to shitcan or pay some guy like me a couple hundred bucks to do a service call to set up every. single. time. because without UPNP many of these damned things will just refuse to do shit. Sadly the only other way I can think of without shitcanning billions of dollars worth of stuff is just dump them on a DMZ and let them be one big giant fucking botnet because without full 2 way communications most of that shit just won't work, so its either leave it on a DMZ or allow UPNP.
Believe me, I've looked into alternatives, there isn't one. Once UPNP was invented all progress just halted and now every device expects UPNP off the bat and won't do shit without it.
You want more links? Be careful what you wish for as i can wallpaper with all the fail that is Windows 8. First we have Acer saying its a fail, we have the press writing articles saying yes its THAT bad, we have usability experts calling it a broken mess and yet another OEM calling it a flop.
So I'm sorry but stick a fork, the fat lady is down the street having a sammich, its done. Win 8 will go next to WinME and MS Bob on the "WTF were they thinking?" lists next year and no matter how many warehouses full MSFT buys they won't be able to give that megabomb away, its over.
Oh I'm sorry, that was the policy under Bill Gates who actually knew how to run a business. You have to revise the formula when working under Ballmer's management..
Step 1: Embrace, Step 2: "What is Apple doing?" Step 3: Copy badly what Apple did years before, Step 4: Lose billions while failing horribly.
That is a MUCH more accurate of how things work under the current management, especially when you take into account the fact that he has pissed away something like 40 billion plus on failed ventures in the past 6 years. The old EEE strategy may have been assholeish but it didn't leave MSFT in much worse shape than when they started which is the end result of pretty much every play Ballmer does.
On a final note, to all the FOSS zealots who still think MSFT is the threat? Please leave the 90s and join the rest of us in reality, okay? Ballmer can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and makes Dilbert's PHB look like Steve Jobs, hell if you want to know what his "strategy" is just look at what Apple was doing 3 to 5 years ago and copy that poorly and there ya go! Frankly we have MUCH worse threats than Uncle Fester the bumbling buffoon to worry about, like Apple's walled gardens or Google pretending to be friendly while making devices like the ChromeBook that is as locked down as any cellphone, now THOSE are problems. Worrying about MSFT whose output for the past few years can be summed up as "fail fail fail fail" is kinda pointless, wait until they actually make another product people will buy (if they ever do) because its like you are ignoring the major issues to nitpick against your "old rival" who frankly isn't even up to the task of being anybody's rival ATM.
For MSFT to be a threat to anything you are gonna have to have somebody with an actual vision in the big chair, as it is now all we have is Apple and a badly done ersatz Apple, and nobody wants ersatz.
Well you have "Windows Anytime Upgrade" which means that you have every component from Windows home through windows Ultimate sitting on the drive in case you decide some day to hand MSFT your CC number and have the switch flipped, as another pointed out you have every version of .NET, you also have Windows SXS (side by side) which puts all the various DLLs that programs try to dump into windows into their own bottles so if some program needs version Foo and some program needs version bar you can have both Foo and Bar even though Windows has been updated to the latest version SNAFU, then of course there is all the different languages, that's a lot of stuff to keep up with and it all takes up space.
I've found if you want to run vista or better on something that is gonna be hurting for space its best to use Vlite or some other similar program to strip out all the shit you aren't gonna ever need as you can shrink Windows vista and 7 by a pretty good amount just by gutting all the extra crap. why MSFT doesn't have an "advanced mode" during install that lets you choose what gets installed like they used to during Win9X I'll never know.
Frankly the end users have been confused as hell since the HDD manufacturers switched from base 2 to base 10 when they were racing to 1GB. Hell even with this, is it 23GB in base 2 like the OS, or is it base 10 like the manufacturers?
But lets face it we all know this is gonna go over like a fart in an elevator, I mean MSFT is making it obvious they don't even understand their own fricking customers with this crap. Does Ballmer think people buy Windows because of the branding like Prada or Nike? Nobody is gonna want this because nobody buys Windows because the brand gives them a warm fuzzy, hell most folks can't even tell you which version of Windows is on their devices!
No the bottom line is people buy windows because of all the X86 Windows software they have to run which makes Surface RT less than pointless, they aren't like Apple where the biggest programs are written by Apple themselves so having Windows on ARM makes absolutely ZERO sense. The fact that MSFT had to cut their Surface order in half should be a surprise to nobody, who is gonna want a Windows that doesn't run Windows programs?
So the fact it doesn't come with 64GB of space, be it base 2 or 10, really isn't gonna make a bit of difference when it comes to sales, its all those people getting home and finding none of the Windows software they've accumalated for years will run on the damned thing, THAT is what is gonna make this into a megaflop. Never before in all my years in tech have I seen a company just blow their own brains out like this, they would have a better ROI if they let some chimps throw poo at stock page and buy what has the most poo on it than they will off their "new flagship", its just got the stench of death and failure pouring off it.
So even you admit that you have to 1.-Put it into Dev mode, 2. Format the hard drive, no dual boots allowed, oh and you forgot 3.- You can ONLY use a single version of Ubuntu that is done by one guy because a bog standard X86 install WILL NOT WORK thanks to how fucking locked down the BIOS/UEFI is even under "dev mode".
As for why they are still getting checks from Android, duh! Because they can't give away their own product in mobile and that's the closest they've come to a positive revenue stream in mobile in over a decade!
If MSFT had any real power left they'd be using Windows licensing to force OEMs to drop Android but that ain't happening, instead it looks like more companies like Acer are in talks to give more business to Google as they can see that Win 8 is a megafail.
so if anything we need to be MORE vigilant, not less, and hold Google's feet to the fire because if they end up taking over and continue to use the ChromeOS model the future of X86 is gonna be nothing but game consoles, all locked down and controlled by corporate AFTER the sale as well as before. i mean when you can't even install Debian or Slax on a Celeron? Something is SERIOUSLY wrong here.
And what pisses me off is the DRM never works, it would be different if they could trot out some numbers to show that when game X was DRM free they sold Y but when DRM was added they sold X+Y but nope, all that ends up happening is shit like this where a guy has to go and crack a brand new game that he just paid $60 for because the DRM has made just playing the damned thing impossible.
And I know EXACTLY how he feels as i have a bunch of games from the late 90s-mid 00s that I HAVE to use the pirate version just to play the game i bought because while the game itself has NO problems running on a 64bit modern OS the DRM is 16bit shit that if you are lucky just crashes, if not it'll try to jam 32bit kernel hooks into a 64bit kernel and fuck up the whole OS. Oh and to add insult to injury the remover that the DRM companies put out to get rid of their shit? Doesn't run on a 64bit OS! Argh!
I've also had pretty good luck with the Lenovo HTPC remote and its combo of trackball and mini-keyboard makes it quite easy to do a lot of the stuff that would normally require you putting down your remote and reaching for a keyboard, renaming files or whipping off a quick chat for instance.
For those that want an XBMC HTPC without all the hassle I'd suggest OpenELEC as they have it pre-built for most of the popular HTPC hardware, Atom+ION, AMD Fusion, Intel GMA, even Apple TV and Raspberry Pi. They are at RC2 with this latest XBMC so I figure another few days and it'll be the main release and it is pretty much install and go.
So if all you want is an HTPC there ya go, its lightweight, built just for running XBMC, and has all the drivers for the hardware you are gonna be using, couldn't be simpler.
Nooo...its a solution to a VERY real problem but its a problem that most geeks don't realize exists. You see your average Joe has all these devices that can connect to the Internet, multiple PCs, tablet, phone, Internet enabled TV, but they don't have a damned clue on how to make ANY of that shit play nice with one another or to set it up so they can use them on the net as they were designed.
So UPNP was invented so Joe average wouldn't have to pay a guy like me a couple of hundred bucks to set up their network while at the same time not having the routers set to just broadcast in the clear with zero encryption and for that? it actually worked pretty well. Now we need a new generation that will be backwards compatible enough so that everyone isn't gonna have to throw out their TVs or tablets while bumping up the security.
But you can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater as folks still need a way to get all this stuff to hook up and to talk to each other without having to have a degree just to get it to work. Like it or not UPNP is a very useful tech to Joe and Jane average and as we get more and more internet capable devices they'll need plug and play simple even more.
And ya know what? despite what so many have written poo pooing the idea of a boycott "poo poo they never work poo poo" the fact that EA is on the selling block along with Activision's parent company looking to restructure tells me that boycotts DO work, they just take awhile to be fully felt.
And if nothing else at the very least you aren't paying to be treated like shit. I refuse to buy any game that has always online DRM and make it clear to the company whose product I'm avoiding not only WHY I'm avoiding them but what competitor got the money earmarked for them. When D3 came out with always online DRM I wrote Blizzard a nice letter telling them that despite buying both of the previous products several times (for myself and for family/friends) this time I would be giving my money to Torchlight II instead which I bought several copies of. While ultimately nobody in a position of power may read my letter at least they know where several sales went and if enough people do the same they can certainly feel it on their bottom line.
Ultimately even if the corp doesn't hear us we have to make sure the Internet media hears us, so that the corps can't use that old scapegoat piracy as an excuse to demand more draconian copyright laws like DMCA. As it is now if we do not speak up some PHB will be trotting out a PPT and while pointing at the numbers say "If you see here we sold X number of our previous product and our focus groups say X+Y play games of that genre today so the fact that we didn't sell X+Y just proves its those dirty pirates".
But I make it clear on any discussion of the game/s I'm boycotting that neither me nor my family will have this product as long as its anti-consumer, we won't buy it, download it, it won't be allowed in our home. So make your voice heard, speak up and let the world know when you refuse to buy a game because of shitty practices and no pirating it either, that just gives them more ammo to use against us.
Paulson is just trying to make himself out to be some sort of savior when in reality only if the Chinese were seriously fucking retarded would they even consider such a frankly ignorant move and I can't picture the Russians being that fucking stupid either.
One thing that should be as plain as the nose on your face is that kind of collapse NEVER stays local, it ALWAYS spreads. One need only look at the crash of 29 which even at the much slower pace of communications had spread across the globe in less than a year and by 32 had the entire planet in a full blown depression to see letting a large economy collapse like a house of cards is NEVER a good idea. Sure China has room for internal growth but nowhere near what it would take to replace their exports which would dry up and blow away like a fart in the breeze, as a collapsing America would probably drag a good chunk of the west with it, everything is just too interconnected.
As for TFA this just in....Cheap shitty code for cheap shitty cameras has holes you can drive a truck though. Oh and water is wet, the sky is blue, and night follows the day. Frankly if the code on ANY of that Cheapo Chinese Crap was anything but piss poor I'd be amazed. As somebody who has to install a bunch of that shit for customers I can tell you that you are lucky if you can even get through the installation without the installer crapping on itself, its obvious that its all about how cheaply they can crank these things out NOT about having decent software to go with the thing.
Or those people along with anyone else who actually cares about open hardware could just put their money where their mouths are and buy AMD who is switching to Coreboot which is a FOSS BIOS/UEFI replacement. After all no need to "flash an open BIOS" if you already have one.
But again its total flamebait as there has been ZERO word or indication to state a position by MSFT one way or another when it comes to the issue.
Personally I think old Ballmer has too damned much on his plate to give a shit about Linux one way or another ATM, he has pretty much bet the farm as well as his own rep (for what little that is worth) on a strategy that might as well be written in crayon on the back of a napkin, namely "Become Apple" which he is learning, just as HP and RIM learned before him, that such a goal is a hell of a lot easier said than done.
So let's wait until someone has actually done something to be all pissy about, yes? With the company fighting the OEMs and trying to convince a public that honestly doesn't give a fuck that slapping a paint job on a Pinto means it can compete with Porsche I truly believe that Ballmer and Co isn't paying a lick of attention to Linux, hell they would probably be happy if Linux hackers were to make any decent number of WinTabs sales as they have had cut their order for Surface units in half to keep from ending up with a warehouse full of the damned things.
BTW as a final note if everyone wants a reason for Linux guys to get their panties in a twist I'll be happy to give you a topic that will do just that: Everyone is cheering the flaming out of Ballmer's folly but why isn't anybody speaking up when it looks like Google is gonna be just as douchey as MSFT and it some ways even worse? Have you SEEN the new Acer ChromeBook? You have an X86 CPU, hard drive, RAM, etc that are so bog standard it hurts yet is so locked down you can't even run Linux X86 on the damned thing! Even MSFT specified that SecureBoot was to be able to be turned off on X86 so you can take any new X86 Windows machine and be booting any standard Linux LiveCD/USB in moments but the ONLY way to do so with a Chromebook is to pour in a page and a half of CLI gobbledygook and do a lot of finger crossing as you have to wipe the hard drive and nobody knows if doing so will void the warranty or not!
So you want something to get pissed over there ya go, if Google were to take over from MSFT tomorrow things would be WORSE not better. Personally I think if everyone doesn't stand up and have a raging shitfit the future is gonna be game consoles all the way down, you can give up on DIY or on having X86 be a general purpose platform as its gonna be as tightly locked down and controlled as any cellphone and will be just as worthless when the corporate owners abandon support for a model.
While I'm all for getting rid of the MSFT monopoly on X86 I don't want to do so at the cost of what made X86 great in the first place.